Well, this is a piece which I wrote when I had nothing better to do other than listening to some friends rant about India,their colleges,cities,home states, and God knows what else. So what I did slightly alleviated my pains : I opened my laptop, put on my headphones, played Summer of 69 at full volume to drown their voices and started hitting the keyboard, having nothing better to vent my frustration on. And the situation forced me to think….
Why are people so obsessed about institutions?? What is it that makes people attached to any institution no matter what it is, a school, a religion, a college, a city, a home state, a country et al…???
I started to think upon it, then I realized a lot of things. Th
e possible reasons for the phenomenon maybe, amongst other things, emotional attachment to the institution due to the good memories associated with it, or maybe the improvements that it brought upon in your life. Or there maybe a thousand other reasons.
Then, the phenomenon intrigued me more, which in hindsight, is quite justified, considering the fact that I, myself, was and am a victim. So I continued wondering…
In fact, allegiances to their institutions have made people do things they themselves probably didn’t imagine doing. Things like Gandhi’s love for India, Lincoln’s conviction in his ideology that led to his assassination, the countless revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives just for the sake of their ideals. It also led to a lot of not so good outcomes. Hitler’s devotion for Nazism, Lenin’s deeply held belief communism are some of the reasons for them. The list doesn’t end for both the sides....and the argument can go on eternally. That is why I decided to play devil’s advocate.
Pessimist that I am(well, for that matter the situation is not that encouraging also), I will start with the cons.
How can you love something more than yourself, is the first question that comes to mind. I mean, it is a thing or maybe an abstract and at times even abstruse concept. Yeah, I do believe in love, but only with homo sapiens and that too, of opposite sexes. Love with inanimate objects and abstract philosophies is, quite frankly, beyond me. And the love is so deep that, despite its being a kind of monologue, with no one replying to you other than some other people who are in love with the same thing. 
How can somebody be so selfless, that he sacrifices his entire life, his desires, cravings, I mean every damn thing that matters to you for some cause? Or worse still, makes you debate fiercely about the pluses and minuses of your country or your home state de facto? Believe me, it is worse. :P .On a more serious note, you can probably not help being a little individualistic and think about yourself, instead of wasting your time over debating the pros and cons of something which even doesn’t bother to reply, let alone talk.
Giving it a slightly deeper and more cynical thought, people are being manipulated psychologically. Think of it, you can’t even count the number of people who have sacrificed their lives for their respective countries. Now, man only divides the earth into countries and countries into states and so on. So, what we basically are doing is fighting over something we ourselves have created and even sacrificing our lives for it. Now, that does sound stupid. Veritably, we only have ourselves to blame for it. The whole foundation of our society rests on such loyalties for institutions.
Take religion for instance, and you can’t even start counting the number of wars waged and lives sacrificed over it. The Crusades between Muslims and Christians in 13th-14th centuries, the French Wars of Religion between Roman Catholics and Protestants, the Thirty Years War in Poland and Scandinavia, the Reconquista and the list never ends, in history. Even now, terrorism, survives on these loyalties only.
All religions teach you to be entirely selfless. Selflessness, altruism are constantly hammered into people’s minds over the period of their innocent childhood. Anything that you do for others is good, and anything that you do for yourself is selfish, therefore , evil. Paropkaar is the 
leitmotif underlying whole of our society. So, till people grow up, their minds are ingrained with benevolence and magnanimousness, which leads to asinine and outrageous results.
Actually loving ourselves is a basic necessity of our lives which we are constantly deprived of. We are taught to love others more. In the process, we lose self-respect and are ready to do anything for any institution, just to feel a little self-worth. Note that, the craving is still there, it will always be there. It is a basic need which won’t die out just because you don’t want to recognize its presence. And we can’t leave the institutions because we are afraid, we fear loneliness. We were never taught to deal with it. We don’t know how to survive. We just know how to go with the flock. Being the lone sheep frightens us because then the flock brands us the black sheep also. So, the conclusion is, love yourself, a little more, so that I am spared the pain of venting my frustration on my readers just because a bunch of ‘loyal’ friends are debating over their institutions and I don’t want to be a part of it.
P.S. : 1. This is just a result of my frustration. So, the literature addicts are requested to have mercy on me.
2. BITSians who know about the particular situation or at least can guess are requested to keep their comments on the situation to themselves. You are more than welcome to comment on the rest of the blog….
